Rewrite Your Career Story: Racquel Moses on Crafting a CEO-Minded Resume

TLDR: Discover why listing job duties on your resume is holding you back and learn how to showcase your true value to potential employers. Racquel reveals her secrets for quantifying your impact, aligning your work with business goals, and using time-tracking to boost your productivity.

Susan: Raquel in Part 1 of our conversation, you spoke passionately and from your concrete experience about the importance of the financials.

And that reminded me that when we had our conversation for your podcast, you said,

It's mandatory for women to understand numerically and measurably how you impacted a business. And to have that on your resume so that it is clear. I don't care what your job is, I know what an analyst does, I know what a secretary does, I know what a chief of staff does. I know most of the roles that you will see - they're not new. I know what those roles do. What I want to see on someone's resume is what did they bring to that role, and how they understand their impact on the business. So many people and women especially miss the opportunity to say, 'I increased sales by 400%.'"

Please talk more about the art of a great resume and a great interview.

Racquel: It's so important. Typically, if I am hiring for a role, chances are most of the things that you've done on your resume, I would be familiar with. I will understand what the core of those rules are. And people waste so much real estate on their resume, describing the role.

Everybody is doing that. They're saying, "As a secretary, I answered the phone." I don't care. I know that a secretary answers the phone. Like I hope you don't think I'm the idiot, right? So that does not need to be on your resume.

What you need to say to me on your resume is how you nailed the job. How you brought you to the position. For example, "I developed a new system for filing that increased efficiency by 20%."

Then once you get the job, that's where the work starts. That's not where the work ends.

You scan your environment and think about what you can bring to this role that you can measure, defend and then use to showcase yourself for new positions? What are you able to do differently from anybody else? Start thinking like that from day one, because I think so many women, they talk about the glass ceiling, but there's also the sticky floor, right?

You get stuck and you don't know how to claw your way out of that position. And again, it may vary, but for me, I say women on the rise, do not get stuck in in middle to entry level position for more than two years. Two years is enough to prove your worth and to accomplish something that can allow you to get to the next level.

And so you need to be walking in thinking about what can I do in this role?

• How can I impact efficiency?
• How can I impact sales?
• What are my KPIs? And remember the KPIs are often negotiable.
• How can I tie my KPIs to the overall goals of the business? And if you can't, you need to ask how, so you need to be having those strategic conversations.

This helps you focus on the fact that you are writing your resume every day.

One of the things that helps me to do that is that I document my time in 6 to 10 minute increments. That means that on my calendar every day for the last 20 years, you know every day what I did and when. For example, that helps me to remember that I was bringing in new donors, coaching the team, meeting with, with customers.

This gives you a really clear picture to build on so that at the end of the week, you can start thinking about the things that contributed to the direction that you're going in. And you can think about the low value things that you need to find a way to either do less of or to not do at all.

Susan: That's great advice. What I'm taking away from this is the importance of coming into a job and realizing that you have to do what's expected of you, but you have to understand how those expectations drive the business forward. And you have to stay focused on the high value actions that are driving the business forward.

I've said in blogs and on prior podcasts that women in STEM (though I think this happens to all credentialed professionals) tend to get "lost in their letters." They think of themselves as professionals of great technical skill - which is how you get the job - but how you progress in your career is by thinking like a CEO about how you're contributing to the business.

You just laid that out perfectly.

Racquel: Well, you are the CEO of you.com, right?

You have to think about it in that way. And I think far too many women get into roles and you feel like, I'm obligated to be loyal, I'm obligated to do the birthday parties. I'm not saying don't do the birthday parties, but understand how much of your time you're spending on those kinds of things.

And when it comes time for a review, you want to know, where your time is spent and the relative value of that time and effort. You want to know the things that are taking too long. And maybe you can get some advice from your leader about how do you do certain things more efficiently. You want to know which are the low value activities that are required as a part of my position that you need to do less of.

But unless you understand how your time is spent, it's very, very difficult to have that conversation, even with yourself.

For example, I will have a week where I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I was so incredibly productive, but then I look back at the time and I spent half the week answering email that is low value.

And that is me reacting to other people and what they want and not me advancing what I want.

Susan: I love that. One of the exciting things about AI  is that if you don't have someone to delegate to, AI can be your friend. Have you been using AI in any ways to offload some of that lower value activity?

Racquel: In Trinidad, we have a saying that's called "you're asking answers." 

My background is technology. I was sold on the AI train and absolutely.

With AI, emails that would have taken me easily an hour to draft, I can now have done in 10 to 15 minutes. For example, there are times when I'm writing something to the board and I've sketched out notes and instead of having to like perfect the grammar I pop the notes into AI  (obviously, without any confidential information). I prompt something like: I'm communicating to the board about these three things, and I want to make sure that they understand that this is the direction in which we're going, and here's what we've accomplished.

Bam. I can get that out in 15 minutes now. I can tell the time savings that AI has provided me because I track the time I spend.

Susan: Bringing us back to the original question. In order to have a great resume, we have to every day:

• Analyze what we do and its value (track time)
• Think like a CEO about how we're moving the business forward.
• Focus on contributing to the business, being a partner in the business.

This enables us to hone our resume so it shines with our measurable impact on the business.

We're going to end it there for Part 2. And in Part 3, we will come back and talk about what to do when you get into an interview.

Catch you next time,

Susan